Formula 1: There is a clear top driver at Ferrari, and he isn’t Sebastian Vettel

There is a clear top driver at Scuderia Ferrari in the 2019 Formula 1 season, and his name is Charles Leclerc, not Sebastian Vettel.

During his first four Formula 1 seasons driving for Scuderia Ferrari from 2015 through 2018, four-time champion Sebastian Vettel was the teammate to 2007 champion Kimi Raikkonen.

During this four-year stint, Vettel was not only the better of the Italian team’s two drivers, but he was the prioritized driver of the team. He earned 13 victories and took 10 pole positions during these four seasons while Raikkonen earned only one victory and took just two pole positions.

Following the first two races of the 2019 season, which is the first season during which Raikkonen has not driven for the Scuderia since the 2013 season, there is still a clear top driver at Ferrari. But his surname is not Vettel.

Before the 2018 season ended, the Italian team confirmed Charles Leclerc, who was in his rookie season driving for Alfa Romeo Sauber at the time, as Raikkonen’s replacement for the 2019 season. In the 2019 season’s first two races, the 21-year-old Monegasque has demonstrated that he is the team’s better driver.

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For the season opener, the Australian Grand Prix, Vettel qualified in third place ahead of Leclerc in fifth, but since then, Leclerc has accounted for much of the team’s success. Even after going off the course early in the 58-lap race, he found himself in fifth and catching Vettel for fourth at a rapid pace as the laps wound down.

Team orders prevented Leclerc from passing Vettel, otherwise he likely would have considering the fact that he was lapping the 16-turn, 3.296-mile (5.304-kilometer) Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit road course in Albert Park, Melbourne, Australia consistently at about one second faster than Vettel.

Leclerc then went on to take the first pole position of his Formula 1 career for the season’s second race, the Bahrain Grand Prix, by recording a top lap time of 87.886 seconds (137.756 miles per hour), which is a new track record around the 15-turn, 3.363-mile (5.412-kilometer) Bahrain International Circuit road course in Sakhir, Bahrain, in the third and final round of qualifying for the race.

Meanwhile, Vettel qualified in second place by recording a top lap time of 88.160 seconds (137.328 miles per hour), which was 0.294 seconds (0.429 miles per hour) slower than that of Leclerc, in the third round of qualifying for this race.

After relinquishing the lead and actually falling back to third place at the start of the race, Leclerc battled back and, despite the fact that Ferrari told him not to, passed Vettel on the track for the lead before going on to dominate the race.

Vettel, as he did on numerous occasions throughout the 2018 season, ended up ruining his chances of having a great result by spinning out on lap 38 of the 57-lap race after he was passed for second place by Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport’s Lewis Hamilton.

Meanwhile, after building up a lead of over 10 seconds over Hamilton in second place, Leclerc found himself in trouble with an engine issue. With only 10 laps remaining, Hamilton passed him for the lead before Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas went on to pass him for second shortly thereafter.

A safety car period saved Leclerc from falling outside of the top three, as the race ended under safety car conditions. Had this safety car not come out, Aston Martin Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen was on pace to pass Leclerc for the third and final spot on the podium.

Unforced errors have become a theme for Vettel, and he has thrown away a boatload of points as a result of them over the last few seasons. Meanwhile, for Leclerc, it was an engine issue that prevented him from securing a dominant first career victory over his teammate and the rest of the field in the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Leclerc currently sits in fourth place in the driver standings with 26 points while Vettel sits behind him in fifth with 22 points. But take away Ferrari’s team orders in the Australian Grand Prix, which were ridiculous to begin with, and the engine issue that was out of Leclerc’s control, and he would have 38 points and trail Bottas by just three points for the lead of the standings in second while Vettel would still be sitting in fifth but with only 20 points.

Has Charles Leclerc proven that he is the better of Ferrari’s two drivers, or is Sebastian Vettel still their top driver? With only two of the 21 races on the 2019 Formula 1 schedule having been contested, only time will tell.